I'd like to "remaster" School Rumble. So far? Failure.

[melee54]

Before I have a heart attack from all of the frustrations of virtual dub, avisynth, mkvextract, mp4box, scripts, and a million other things I don't understand, I figured I'd better ask for help. I consider myself above average when it comes to computers (I build my own, repair them, etc.), but this is pretty new to me. To put it simply, I'd like to do the following - take ugly School Rumble rips and make them less ugly and as "HD" as possible.

I need some help. Pretty confused.

1. Extracting a video from an mkv file using Mkvextract gives me a .h264 file which virtualdub will not open. I was able to convert it to .mp4 and play it in my media players, but I still can't open it in virtualdub. I've used probably 1.21 jigawatts of electricity spending hours reading guides and failing continuously. (By the way, I've searched these forums and many users reference "the tutorial", but I see no such stickied tutorial").

2. Once I get virtualdub to magically open my video file, how the heck do I make virtualdub load my .avs script files? Just dragging the .avs script into the plugins folder does squat, since vdub seemingly only opens .vdf files.


Or if there's an easier way to do this, I'm all ears. I just want to apply some filters and do whatever I can to make the quality of this anime more bearable since there'll most likely never be a bluray of it.

[Pwolf]

Or if there's an easier way to do this, I'm all ears.

Buy the dvds/blus.

[mirkosp]

School Rumble is SD, so even if there were to be BDs it's best to just save money and buy the DVDs, they'll look better. No need to upscale, either.

[melee54]

I already have the Funi DVDs and the quality is junk, even for SD. The MKVs I have look better, but I'd like to be able to make them more bearable.

[mirkosp]

Mmmh... do you have any sample screenshots of the funi DVDs and same screen from the MKVs? Considering the MKVs are probably an already filtered and re-encoded version of the DVDs, depending on how good or bad of a job they did, it might be better to filter the DVDs from the beginning than using those MKVs as a starting point.

[melee54]

Mmmh... do you have any sample screenshots of the funi DVDs and same screen from the MKVs? Considering the MKVs are probably an already filtered and re-encoded version of the DVDs, depending on how good or bad of a job they did, it might be better to filter the DVDs from the beginning than using those MKVs as a starting point.

Sure, here's the DVD screenshot
http://i.imgur.com/0sOG8.jpg (thought I'd just direct link to them due to size)

and here's the MKV screenshot
http://i.imgur.com/6UZED.png

The DVDs are so blurry and noisey that they hurt my eyes, lol. Grain, grain everywhere.

[EvaFan]

The DVD screenshot looks a ton better minus a bit of fuzzy edges. Just try a bit of sharpening and you should be good. I can't tell much for noise since there isnt some video or a few frames to check for it but still...

If you look at them both side by side the MKV has completely destroyed the textures on the wall, its pure white... It even destroyed some of the fine lines. Removing grain completely is good for compression, it seems thats what they did on the MKV but it sacrificed alot of fine detail in regards to quality.

Its fine if you want to degrain or remove some noise from the DVD's but your going to destroy textures it if you do too much like in the case of that MKV. If you want perfectly sterile footage then your going to have to deal with loss in detail... Keep that in mind.

[melee54]

I actually think it's something wrong with my Media Player Classic. When I play it in VLC, the colors and detail look the same as the DVD. I tried editing my post, but apparently only donators can do that. Strange. So here are the new screen shot comparisons. They look roughly the same in still, but in actual motion the DVD has really strange interlacing and motion problems.

VLC MKV - http://i.imgur.com/UnbnX.jpg

DVD - http://i.imgur.com/0sOG8.jpg

Anyway, whatever the case, is there anything I can do to make them slightly better? I cam across this custom DBGT remaster on YouTube. Looks amazing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t885HRzeZTE

I doubt I'd get anywhere near that, though, due to different art / line styles of the anime.

[melee54]

Wrong VLC MKV screenshot. My fault. Gah', edit would be really useful. http://i.imgur.com/4WUoz.jpg

[EvaFan]

Media player classic uses decoders on your computer, VLC uses built in ones. The decoder on your computer has some high smoothing settings apparently. I can't think of any other reason it would look that different from the VLC one.

Anyway looks like the only difference is some sharpening between the two. I can't tell anything else without more frames and full screening.

That DBGT remaster has bold, dark, thick lines and perfect color ramping(color changing without banding)... Basically sterile footage. It looks nice and neat but there is little detail. I guess it boils down to personal preference.

You could potentially get your source to look somewhat like it but you would probably destroy all detail. It would require alot of smoothing and virtually removing grain all together. Probably some line darkening and thickening, thinning when necessary.

IMO... I would just sharpen it a bit and maybe increase saturation a bit to make colors more bold, they look kinda faded. It's just preference. I honestly cant tell much more than that without frame by framing.